“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Even today’s mail, which we read after finishing our discussion, contained several beautiful examples of points I’ve described above. This brought up another matter—our being confronted with the work we have published, as well as by Mass Events and God of Jane. No way to get away from those fifteen books of the past, I said, so to that extent we have to live with the results they engender. I too wondered about dispensing with answering the mail, while being very reluctant to do so, since many of the letters are openly laudatory, and we save them for reference [although we haven’t actually used any for such purposes]. But therein lies trouble, too, I said, because they would reflect Jane’s concern about public exposure, her fears about leading people astray.

(These notes at the end of the session are meant to round out the opening notes, and to suggest new questions for us and for Seth. The other day I’d told Jane that I had given up on the idea of donating our work and assets to Yale University Library —indeed, that in the year since we’d had our will made out I hadn’t sent them any material at all. Jane agreed that the idea of Yale had made her uneasy. I hadn’t even answered Larry Dowler’s long letter of acceptance beyond sending him a short note of thanks for all his work. Jane, now, did not urge that we contribute to Yale. Our will still commits us in case of accident, say, but that document can be changed.

(We are making small decisions about protection along the way, however. Today I mailed Jane’s letter to Meredith Wheeler of ABC News, declining MW’s second recent invitation to be on that show; and when Tam called this afternoon to tell Jane that a British journalist was at CBS in NYC, and wanted to interview her for a newspaper article, we decided to not call back and okay the interview.

(I remarked to Jane today that if I’d known what I think I know now, today, a month ago we could have withdrawn Mass Events from Prentice-Hall, using the disclaimer dispute as an excuse, and delayed its publication for as long as we wanted to. I added that although we’d talked about doing so—and had even mentioned doing so in our letter to the legal department last December—I’d also felt that she wouldn’t stand for such an action. Now, it seems that we will have to deal with the public as far as Mass Events goes. All of these kinds of reasons apply to God of Jane also, as far as I can tell, though probably to a lesser degree.